The Virginian

Friday, September 30, 2011

We have been bad and Obama's angry with us. That's the only explanation for what's happening.

Frank J. Fleming's trying to figure out how to stay God's Obama's wrath.

The Barack Obama presidency has been disastrous. The economy is in shambles, and Obama’s only response has been to try and waste as much of our money as he can. Jobs are a scarce commodity, and yet Obama is trying to raise taxes. And his Department of Justice is apparently selling guns to Mexican drug cartels. All of this raises the obvious question: What did we do to make Obama hate us and want to destroy us?

Obama was elected on the promise of hope and change; he was going to make everything better by fixing the economy, ending all wars, and making every rainbow a double rainbow. As smart and capable as we all knew he was, he should have succeeded beyond our wildest imaginations. But instead, we’re even worse off than before — I don’t remember the last time I even saw a single rainbow. The only explanation is that somehow we’ve angered Obama and caused him to turn against us. It’s just that I’m not sure how.

Here are a few of things we must do.

THINGS TO TRY TO MAKE OBAMA LIKE US

Stop asking what’s in the bills he wants to pass. We elected Obama to help us, yet when he tries to help by coming up with bills to pass, suddenly we want all the details.

“Where is all this stimulus money getting spent?”

“What exactly does this health care law do?”

“Are you sure half a billion dollars for this solar panel company is a good idea?”

That’s a lot of questions, and Obama obviously doesn’t like any of them. If he’s very important and smart and quite unconcerned about the contents of his bills, then why should unimportant people like us worry our heads about it? It’s like we don’t trust his judgment. Next time he has a bill, we should just approach it with an attitude like, “Won’t this be exciting! Who knows what wonders passing this bill will unleash?!”

The demise of Solyndra, the bankrupt solar panel company showered with more than a half-billion dollars in stimulus loans, exposes the fatal flaw of President Obama’s jobs plans.

Government officials rushed $535 million to Solyndra because the Obama administration was determined to make the company the centerpiece of its green agenda regardless of the law of supply and demand. Billions more have been wasted by politicians betting on favored companies and making Washington bigger, using the brute force of government to force liberal preferences into the economy. Mr. Obama calls them “investments,” but this is really venture socialism.

The entire purpose of the $825 billion stimulus bill was to sink government money into politically advantageous projects. Once the federal coffers were opened, the venture vultures eagerly descended. Obama bundler and major Solyndra backer George Kaiser, who splits his time between Oklahoma and California, explained it this way in a July 2009 speech in Tulsa: “There has never been more money shoved out of the government’s door in world history and probably never will be again than in the last few months and the next 18 months. And our selfish, parochial goal is to get as much of it for Tulsa and Oklahoma as we possibly can.”

Mr. Kaiser was right: The government was shoveling money to various projects faster than the country had ever seen. The Department of Energy issued loans or loan guarantees or offered conditional support for loan guarantees totaling $38.6 billion for green energy projects, one of which was Solyndra. The program was supposed to “create or save” 65,000 jobs. But as taxpayers learned in recent weeks, this type of financial support carries substantial risk for the taxpayer. If the project fails, as Solyndra did, government foots the bill. And those promised jobs? They haven’t materialized. The Department of Energy (optimistically) says just 3,545 permanent jobs have been created as a result of the program. Still, the money keeps getting shoveled to high-risk startups. The Department of Energy is expected to finalize $9 billion more in green loans by the end of the month.

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

The 26-year-old Massachusetts man, [and Northeastern University graduate with a degree in physics] Rezwan Ferdaus, was arrested as part of an FBI sting operation in which he was made to believe he was working with members of al Qaeda, who were actually undercover agents.

Ferdaus allegedly gave the undercover FBI agents a detailed set of attack plans “with step-by-step instructions as to how he planned to attack the Pentagon and Capitol,” according to the Department of Justice.

His motive?

According to the DOJ, a focal point of Ferdaus’s plots revolved around “jihad” and his desire to carry out the will of Allah.

The U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Carmen M. Ortiz, stressed that any underlying religious motives to Ferdaus’s actions should not reflect on the Muslim culture at-large.

“I want the public to understand that Mr. Ferdaus’s conduct, as alleged in the complaint, is not reflective of a particular culture, community or religion,” Ortiz said.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Walter Russell Mead has some useful things to say from time to time. Today is not one of them.

He writes an essay that is almost a parody of a NY Times editorial: Dissing: The Sincerest Form Of Flattery in which he tries to prove that the world's contempt is a sign of our importance. Perhaps the next article will be designed to show that Jihadists attack us because they love us.

He provides a list of leaders around the world who are publicly challenging the United States, but concludes that this is business as usual.

Mead:

“While administration missteps, most notably on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, have contributed to the current atmosphere, there is nothing new about some of these problems. It has been decades since Europeans welcomed US advice about their economic problems. German chancellors since Konrad Adenauer have regularly roasted the US for what they see as our national addiction to budget deficits and fecklessly loose monetary policy. China has never liked our support for Taiwan, and the current brouhaha is mild by historical standards and looks more pro-forma than in-depth. A newly democratic and assertive Turkey is running through the eastern Mediterranean like a bull in a china shop, but this has less to do with anything President Obama has done than with long term trends in Turkey itself.”

So we’re not seeing the US being treated any differently than before? The Konrad Adenauer I remember may not have liked American fiscal policy (the memory of hyperinflation haunts Germany to this day), but it's inconceivable that he would have deviated from American policy. He was the leader of a country we recently defeated and currently occupied. His political focus was staying on the right side of the US.

China is now lecturing the US about how to run a country, and NY Times columnists prefer their political system to ours. And who thinks that if China bothers to invade Taiwan Obama will do anything but give a speech at the UN?

Turkey is turning Islamist and challenging Israel in the knowledge that the Obama administration is only paying lip service to that country, not because of any genuine commitment to the Jewish state, because they don’t want to lose the Jewish vote. If Obama wins re-election in 2012 and Holocaust II occurs, it will be greeted with crocodile tears by the Left and Obama, but I repeat myself.

No, Walter, there is a real and not-so-subtle difference between the way the world views the US since Obama entered office. Bush, and the Presidents that preceded him believed in American exceptionalism and translated that belief into policies which, if not always successful, resulted in either respect, or fear even in the case of our enemies. Hitler, the Japanese and even Osama may have viewed the US as a morally weak, mongrel nation, a "weak horse." But that view was not shared by Americn leaders or its people. Obama, a genuine product of the 60’s Left counterculture does not believe that America is anything special. Worse, he sees the US as the cause of much of the world’s woes. That is the meaning of Obama’s “apology tour.” It’s the reason that the US now inspires contempt. If our leaders don't believe in our basic goodness, what are others supposed to think?

Pakistan, which trembled - and cooperated - when Bush gave them an ultimatum to side with us against the Taliban or face destruction now gives us the middle finger by inviting the Chinese Vice Prime Minister to discuss regional security after sending surrogates to attack the American embassy in Afghanistan.

Walter deludes himself and tries to put lipstick on this pig by saying that:

“That leaders around the world find President Obama and the country he leads such a useful target for insults and such a useful scapegoat when things go wrong is, in a perverse — and from a US point of view, somewhat unpleasant — way, a form of flattery. The United States is being so widely attacked because it matters so much. Germany does not attack Indian leaders who criticize its economic policies; Netanyahu does not spend a lot of time thinking up new ways to demonstrate his independence from Brazil.”

Unfortunately a simple Google search shows that Germany criticizes just about every country and vice versa. We simply don’t hear about it much because, let’s face it, we’re really not used to caring about what other countries squabble about behind our backs. It’s why NPR re-broadcasts BBC World News programs, to give us a flavor for things that simply don’t appear in the American national press.

Walter concludes:

“The real challenge the United States faces is to develop a new kind of strategy for a more fluid and tumultuous world.”

The question must be asked why the world is more fluid and tumultuous. Was the US on vacation, coming back to find the house trashed by teen age party goers left behind? Walter says America “matters so much.” If so, it's inescapable that we contributed by our actions or inactions to a tumultuous world. I maintain that the one factor that added substantially to the world’s fluidity and tumultuousness is an American president who focused his attention on shedding American global leadership because he believed that that leadership was essentially evil. A president who believes that the UN - a collection of despots an kleptocrats - is the proper vehicle for global leadership.

This belief is reflected in the way America is viewed and treated. It’s completely natural and totally expected. I’m surprised that anyone should think anything else. Especially someone as erudite as Walter Russell Mead.

Wild Bill and the Secret Service

James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal notes the number of Leftists who are stating that the country needs is a good dictator. Rome, in its transition from a Republic to an Empire had the same kind of people in charge.

North Carolina's Gov. Beverly Perdue thought suspending elections might be the answer to the nation’s problems.

Peter Orzag in the New Republic believes that unelected and unaccountable “experts” should have the power of life and death.

Thomas Friedman of the NY Times admires the way that the Chinese rulers are able to run things without having to worry about what the people of China think.

Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker is content with calling Republicans “insane” and regrets that he can’t keep them from voting or send them to an insane asylum.

The reason that Democrats are ready to give up on democracy is that they seem to realize that there is a very powerful change coming.

Why are Democrats suddenly so undemocratic? Probably because they fear that this observation, from Nile Gardiner in a blog post for London's Daily Telegraph, will turn out to be accurate:

The United States is undergoing one of the biggest political revolutions in its post-war history, and perhaps the most important since Ronald Reagan, with an emphatic rejection of the idea that government knows best when it comes to handling key domestic issues, especially relating to the economy. . . .

Barack Obama could well end up being the last big government president of the United States, a nation that simply cannot afford the lavish excesses of an imperious presidency that drains the pay-checks of hard-working Americans with impunity and reckless abandon. The historic loss of faith in the federal government under Obama has combined with growing support across America for a return to the limited government ideals of the Founding Fathers.

Have you ever noticed that when the country is badly governed the media begin to repeat the refrain that it’s no longer governable, or in this case, that it’s time to turn to un-elected rulers. It's the fascist streak that's an undercurrent inthe Liberal camp.

Ever since Congress passed the 2008 Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in a rush to do something over lead content in toys, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has had to preside over a mess of nonsensical rules that needlessly burden small business. Today, the Commission will make an unpleasant splash of its own, with a vote that could force community and municipal pools to make unnecessary and expensive fixes to their drains.

Under the 2008 law, the Commission was required to come up with a standard to make pool drains "unblockable," preventing paddling tots from getting their legs or arms stuck in the suction system. Last year, the commission voted 3-2 in favor of allowing pools to use a plastic mechanism that could be fastened over existing drains to avoid potential accidents. Problem solved.

Or so it seemed until Commissioner Bob Adler, who voted in favor of the drain cover 18 months ago, inexplicably changed his mind. Today, the Commission will hold a revote on the issue, which may now require all community pools to revamp their drainage systems, or padlock the gates. With many pools unable to afford the thousands of dollars in new equipment and retrofitting, the latter may be the only choice.

Democrats like Henry Waxman and Florida's Debbie Wasserman Schultz have been in favor of requiring new safety mechanisms on drainage systems for a while, and one of the main potential beneficiaries of the change, Vac-Alert Industries President Paul Pennington, said in a CPSC hearing in April that he helped Ms. Wasserman Schultz write the original legislation. In a letter to the CPSC earlier this month, Mr. Pennington urged the CPSC to reconsider its requirements for an "unblockable" drain.

Aren't you glad to know that toddlers won't be sucked into pool drains any more. Oh, you have never heard of a toddler being sucked into a pool drain? Never mind.

She's lost her virginity but isn't married yet.

"Going by the book, not getting the results."

Art Cashin quotes Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher:

Yesterday, Fisher stepped to the podium again. Here, his purpose was to explain and clarify why he dissented on Operation Twist. Unfortunately, he is hampered a bit by respecting the yet to be disclosed minutes of the meeting. Perhaps he will re-visit the topic more fully after the minutes are released. He did begin yesterday’s speech with a really terrific analogy. As he started, a large photo was shown of a sign outside the Jan Mayen Arctic Weather Station. As the picture loomed above, Fisher explained as follows:

Jan Mayen is a desolate volcanic island located about 600 miles west of Norway’s North Cape. It is the home of a meteorological and communications station manned in the harshest of winters by 17 hearty members of the Norwegian Armed Forces. If you read Tom Clancy’s Hunt for Red October, you would know it as “Loran-C,” a NATO tracking and transmissions station. In the video game Tomb Raider: Underworld, Lara Croft visits Jan Mayen in search of Thor’s Hammer, considered the most awesome of weapons in Norse mythology, capable of leveling mountains and performing the most heroic feats. My brother Mike recently visited this station on Jan Mayen. This is the sign that greeted him. In norsk, it reads as follows:

“Theory is when you understand everything, but nothing works.”

“Practice is when everything works, but nobody understands why.”

“At this station, theory and practice are united, so nothing works and nobody understands why.”

My wry brother implied that this about summed it up for monetary policy. Drawing on theory and practice, the 17 members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) have been working in the harshest economic environment to harness monetary theory and lessons learned from practice to revive the economy and job creation without forsaking our commitment to maintaining price stability. But the committee’s policy has yet to

show evidence of working and nobody seems to quite understand why.

Let’s repeat that last sentence one more time for emphasis. “But the committee’s policy has yet to show evidence of working and nobody seems to quite understand why.” That makes the frustration in the FOMC (and elsewhere in the government) fully palpable. It suggests that “we’re doing what the book says to do” but not getting the results the book suggested.

That's not reassuring. It's possible that we have a delusional President living a fantasy life and a Federal Reserve headed by the man who's reputed to know what went wrong during the Great Depression and how to prevent it from happening again. He's reading from the book ... and it's not working.

Orders for long-lasting goods unexpectedly fell during August, the second drop in three months as manufacturers struggle with a bad economy.

Durable-goods orders decreased by 0.1% from the prior month to $201.76 billion, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a 0.2% rise in orders during August for durables, which are goods designed to last at least three years. The drop followed a 4.1% surge in July and a 1.1% decline during June.

Not to be too snarky, but these may the the same economists that predicted that STIMULUS 1 would keep unemployment under 8%.

It is difficult to understand how Obama’s Department of Justice could have thought it a good idea to facilitate, and even finance, the transfer of AK-47s and similar weapons into the hands of Mexican drug gangs. Some think the Obama administration’s purpose was to facilitate gun control by setting up American gun dealers–who were so puzzled by the instructions they got from the feds that at least one of them recorded his phone conversations with ATF agents. I haven’t seen any hard evidence that this was the motive. But if it wasn’t, what was? The administration’s strategy has been to hunker down, stonewall, rely on its friendly relations with journalists, and hope that we never find out.

I don't agree with John Hineraker's conclusion that we need hard evidence that this was a plot to undermine the 2nd Amendment. There is no other logical explanation.

In another few instants only one will come up with it, but in this moment all have a chance at it and all are transported at the opportunity to transcend themselves and enter into something bigger, brighter, and finer than their lives would otherwise be.

...the attackers pounded on his front windows and kicked his wooden door so hard, it flew open and some of them entered his house.

"The first guy hits me with a pipe. The second guy knocks me in the face. All I'm hearing is my wife and kids screaming," said LaVelle, who feared that the next time they saw him, he would be in a casket.

He said that he was able to push the attackers out the door, but then a third man - who had a gun - tried to extend his arm. LaVelle grabbed onto the gunman's lower arm and shoulder so he couldn't raise the weapon. Then, police sirens screamed in the neighborhood, and the mob turned and ran.

Ann Marlow sets the record straight on the people who fight and die for us. In The Truth About Who Fights for Us she proves that the Liberal media's assumptions about who joins the Army are wrong.

In 2008, using data provided by the Defense Department, the Heritage Foundation found that only 11% of enlisted military recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth, or quintile, of American neighborhoods (as of the 2000 Census), while 25% came from the wealthiest quintile. Heritage reported that "these trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40% of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods, a number that has increased substantially over the past four years."

Indeed, the Heritage report showed that "low-income families are underrepresented in the military and high-income families are overrepresented. Individuals from the bottom household income quintile make up 20.0 percent of Americans who are age 18-24 years old but only 10.6 percent of the 2006 recruits and 10.7 percent of the 2007 recruits. Individuals in the top two quintiles make up 40.0 percent of the population, but 49.3 percent of the recruits in both years."

...

Meanwhile, whites were significantly overrepresented among enlisted Army personnel in 2010. While 58% of Americans 18-39 years old are white, 64% of the Army's enlisted men and women are. Whites are underrepresented to a minor degree in only one category, in which blacks are overrepresented: Army officers. While 74% of 25-54 year-olds with bachelor's degrees are white, 72% of Army officers are white. While 8% of 25-54 year-olds with B.A.s are black, 13% of Army officers are.

Is it true that with a shaky economy, blacks have been driven to enlist in the Army in dramatically increased numbers? The 2010 numbers say otherwise. While 60% of 18-24 year-olds with a high school degree are white and 17% are black, 64% of new enlistees are white and 19% are black.

Are Liberal elites simply lying? Perhaps to themselves. The truth is more prosaic.

Why do myths persist despite all the evidence? One reason is lack of firsthand exposure to the military: Doing a journalistic embed with American troops or visiting a U.S. military base—or simply having some friends in the military—would disabuse my acquaintances of their beliefs.

This detachment is the result of a withdrawal of our urban elites from military service. And it suits the interests of many members of the urban elite to believe that the military they do not join is composed of poor, uneducated victims of an unfair society.

I have written before about Obama’s deep, almost desperate, need to portray himself as the opposite of what he is, to conceive of himself in a way that is at odds with reality. We have seen it in all sorts of areas, including claiming himself to be a voice of civility, portraying himself as a champion of bi-partisanship, lecturing others about profligate spending, and saying he is the only responsible “adult” in Washington. Now we see this habit in a new arena – this time, the president as Obama the Stoic, a man so committed to “pressing on” for the cause of social justice he just doesn’t have time to feel sorry for himself. Indeed, he has now decided to sermonize to others not to complain, not to grumble, and to “stop crying.”

I have been working under the assumption that Obama knows that he’d lying, knew he was creating straw men and creating false choices. The thought that he is actually deluding himself and believes what he says is even more disturbing. It means that we don’t have a knave as President, but a delusional fool. That’s dangerous.

According to a new survey, the majority of doctors do not believe that the AMA represents their views and interests. Much of that dissatisfaction stems from the organization’s support for President Obama’s contentious health care reform package.

Monday, September 26, 2011

The US can become a net energy exporter is the government will let it. But it won't happen under an Obama administration who prefers to see $5+ gasoline and having unemployed Americans freeze in the dark.

One of the latest hot spots for deal making is far from New York City or Silicon Valley—it's in eastern Ohio, where energy companies are staking claims in what is being touted as North America's next big energy field, the Utica Shale.

While the 170,000-square-mile Utica Shale sprawls beneath parts of eight states and Canada, energy companies and analysts believe the richest reserves of oil and valuable natural-gas liquids, such as propane and butane, lie in eastern Ohio.‬

A record-high 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed, adding to negativity that has been building over the past 10 years.

At a dinner party this weekend I proposed a toast to Obama. My hosts were shocked until I explained that Obama had managed to discredit Liberalism, Progressivism, Socialism (or whatever you want to call it) for a generation. You can thank Barack Obama for a sharp right turn in the political direction of the country. The Republicans could not have done this nearly as well.

Note the slope of the graph, disapproval of Obama is accelerating!

There's more:

49% of Americans believe the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. In 2003, less than a third (30%) believed this.

Cheap dates: How the ‘price’ of sex has dropped to record lows.

Regnerus likens the price of sex to the housing market. Too many foreclosures in one community, and the price of neighboring homes start to plummet. This is why single women in New York sometimes feel as though sex on the first date is a given: According to the market, it is.

“Every sex act is part of a ‘pricing’ of sex for subsequent relationships,” Regnerus said. “If sex has been very easy to get for a particular young man for many years and over the course of multiple relationships, what would eventually prompt him to pay a lot for it in the future -- that is, committing to marry?”

Did you answer, “Love”? You’re adorable.

“Sexual strategies for making men ‘fall in love’ typically backfire, because men don’t often work like that,” Regnerus says.

Authentically Black!

Authentically Black!

The answer to the question: what is Herman Cain and not Barack Obama?

In 2008 the Democrats nominated their version of a “black man:” a Harvard grad born in Hawaii to a white woman, and raised by his white grandmother. He was their “great black hope” … in the words of Joe Biden: “clean and articulate.” A chimera, a foolish fantasy, who’s primary tool for advancement is acting as a blank screen for weak minded people who wanted to see their own desires reflected back at them.

Stepping straight out of the pages of GQ Magazine, with a brilliant smile and perfectly creased pants, he made a thrill run up their legs. He was the made-for-media candidate complete with Hollywood sets, fake Styrofoam columns and fainting fans. In the other corner you had a fading war hero whose primary constituency, the MSM, enlisted in Obama’s army. It’s not really fair to say they abandoned McCain because their support was always intended to make him the Republican candidate and then to eviscerated him during the election. McCain, not the sharpest tool in the shed, never knew what hit him.

It would be fascinating to see how a Herman Cain vs. Barack Obama election campaign would change the American electoral map. Most specifically, how would the Black community voting patterns change? Their economic situation has gotten much, much worse. Obama has appointed many black officials, but these have been of “The talented tenth” variety. For example, Obama recently nominated the black publisher of the Virginian Pilot, Maurice Jones, to be Deputy Secretary of HUD. He has done nothing for the woman who works the checkout register at the local cafeteria telling each customer to “have a blessed day.”

Would Herman Cain resonate with the average black man or woman if they had to choose between the Liberal’s dream of a black man and a real black man? One eats arugula and one made pizza. One went to Harvard and the other to Morehouse.

I know how I and lots of my friends are going to vote. It’s “ABO” (anyone but Obama). The interesting question is how the black vote will split because without the black vote Obama doesn’t have that checkout lady’s prayer.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

“At a time when Barack Obama is under fire for steering hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funds to a failed company linked to a major campaign donor, it is stunning that he would come to Missouri and raise money with another recipient of stimulus cash,” Smith said in a statement to POLITICO. “Sadly, Missourians have come to expect this kind of pay-to-play from the Obama administration. November 2012 can't come soon enough.”

It's the Chicago way!

Frankly, Obama lost his fundraising virginity long ago and the MSM gave him a pass, even McCain was too scared to say anything. I'm surprised that anyone is either surprised of outraged. Once you start turning political tricks for cash, you're a political whore.

...they're afraid to mock a black president. You'll note almost never is a black man mocked by white comedians, anywhere. They avoid it like the plague, terrified of being called racist. If you portray him as being arrogant, someone will cry they are saying he's "uppity." If you portray him as ignorant or hapless, someone will cry they are saying blacks are stupid. Just about anything that could possibly be taken as negative is used as proof of racism by the grievance mongers.

They need to appear better than those who would say such a thing to their friends and coworkers. The color of his skin trumps the content of his character for these oh-so tolerant people.

But second, and more importantly, they're following the same pattern as Congressional Black Caucus leader Emmanuel Cleaver: they don't want to hurt their leftist hero. Sure, the hero part is starting to fade away, but he's still the great left hope, their last bastion against the horror of Republicans in power. Weaken him and they might come back, and that's simply an evil beyond imagining.

...

President Obama's fragile, narcissistic, in over his head persona is just too weak to sustain any real mockery. That's why the "celebrity candidate" ad that McCain ran in 2008 was so powerful, and the Obama team had no answer for it. The man is overly ripe for mockery, and ultimately that's why they lay off: he's such a fat target it would only hurt their cause.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Ann Coulter does a much better job than the MSM explaining why Troy Davis' appeal was denied.

It's nearly impossible to receive a death sentence these days -- unless you do something completely crazy like shoot a cop in full view of dozens of witnesses in a Burger King parking lot, only a few hours after shooting at a passing car while exiting a party.

That's what Troy Davis did in August 1989. Davis is the media's current baby seal of death row.

After a two-week trial with 34 witnesses for the state and six witnesses for the defense, the jury of seven blacks and five whites took less than two hours to convict Davis of Officer Mark MacPhail's murder, as well as various other crimes. Two days later, the jury sentenced Davis to death.

...

It's true that the bulk of the evidence against Davis was eyewitness testimony. That tends to happen when you shoot someone in a busy Burger King parking lot.

...

Now the media claim that seven of the nine witnesses against Davis at trial have recanted.

First of all, the state presented 34 witnesses against Davis -- not nine -- which should give you some idea of how punctilious the media are about their facts in death penalty cases.

Among the witnesses who did not recant a word of their testimony against Davis were three members of the Air Force, who saw the shooting from their van in the Burger King drive-in lane. The airman who saw events clearly enough to positively identify Davis as the shooter explained on cross-examination, "You don't forget someone that stands over and shoots someone."

Recanted testimony is the least believable evidence since it proves only that defense lawyers managed to pressure some witnesses to alter their testimony, conveniently after the trial has ended. Even criminal lobbyist Justice William Brennan ridiculed post-trial recantations.

...

There's a reason more than a dozen courts have looked at Davis' case and refused to overturn his death sentence. He is as innocent as every other executed man since at least 1950, which is to say, guilty as hell.

Wanger was angered by testimony from the two scientists, Frederick V. Feyrer and Jennifer M. Norris, that he said was "false," "contradictory" and "misleading." He accused the Interior Department of "bad faith" in providing the two scientists as experts, and claimed their testimony was "an attempt to mislead and to deceive the court into accepting not only what is not the best science, it's not science." An Interior Department spokesman defended Norris and Feyrer, telling the New York Times that "we stand behind the consistent and thorough findings by our scientists on these matters and their dedicated use of the best available science."

Wanger and the Interior Department scientists cannot both be right. The judge's assessment of their testimony and his conclusion about the agency's conduct in the case raise profoundly serious questions about the integrity and honesty of all the federal officials involved in the delta smelt case. And if the judge is correct in that case, taxpayers should be wondering whether other government scientists have given impeachable testimony on behalf of questionable federal environmental policies.

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who represents a large portion of the Central Valley, is right to call for a congressional investigation "into the actions of Secretary Salazar and others at Interior in relation to California water policy. The recent U.S. District Court ruling, citing illegal actions and abuse of power on the part of Interior, must be addressed."

Obama: "... a whole new level of stupid."

"We’re the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad," Barack Obama.

That's what the president of the United States flat-out said Thursday during what was supposed to be a photo op to sell his jobs plan next to an allegedly deteriorating highway bridge.

A railroad between continents? A railroad from, say, New York City all the way across the Atlantic to France? Now, THAT would be a bridge!

It's yet another humorous gaffe by the Harvard graduate, overlooked by most media for whatever reason. Like Obama saying Abraham-Come-Lately Lincoln was the founder of the Republican Party. Or Navy corpseman. Or the Austrian language. Fifty-seven states. The president of Canada. Etc.

Margaret Carlson imitates the Onion

The Wall Street Journal’s “Best of the Web” column by James Taranto has a regular feature called “Life imitates the Onion,” the Onion being a satirical publication. This morning as I was glancing through my local paper’s op-ed section I noted a column by Margaret Carlson that has to fit the definition. Trying to make fun of Republicans she noted that there is a lot of vocal opposition on the Right about the law that effectively bans 100 watt incandescent light bulbs. How did Congress do that? I’ll let Margaret Carlson explain:

Under the law … a 100-watt incandescent bulb would have to use only 72 watts of energy starting in 2012.

Carlson was serious, oblivious to the fact that a 100 watt bulb uses 100 watts of energy, by definition! If it uses less or more, it’s not a 100 watt bulb.

Which is no less insane that the Onion article that claimed that legislation had been introduced that changes the value of pi to 3 because the real value 3.1416 was too hard to use.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

After a week of universally scathing pans from the reflexively anti-Palin establishment media, McGinniss now faces the fight of his literary life: the accusation that he seems to have knowingly submitted a book to his publisher, Crown/Random House, that was filled with unproved “tawdry gossip” and rumors that lacked “factual evidence.”

Here's the e-mail:

From: Joe McGinniss

To: Jesse Griffin

Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 6:15 PM

Subject: I have to ask you for help

Jesse–

Legal review of my manuscript is underway and here’s my problem: no one has ever offered documentation of any of the lurid stories about the Palins. Shailey Tripp is the latest example.

APD and Sarah have denied that Todd had any involvement with her. To my knowledge, no one has provided any evidence that he did. TheEnquirer cites AlaskaWTF, which in turn cites the Enquirer: what good is that? I’m also told that the Enquirer is preparing to back off this story and save face by denouncing Ms. Tripp as an unreliable source who promised documentation she couldn’t provide.

She may be mentally unstable and prone to fabrication, delusion, or both. Her joint may be called Blue Hands Massage (brrrrr!), but she’s no Monica Lewinsky with a blue dress with a semen stain, that’s for sure.

Do you believe that Todd paid her for sex? If so, why do you believe that, other than that you wish it were true?

A lurid, sensational, defamatory story about Todd, based only on the account of a woman charged with prostitution, who is no doubt desperate for money, and who sold her story to the Enquirer, is a gift from heaven for Sarah.

Jesse, you can ridicule Sarah for calling in to the execrable Bob & Mark, but the fact is that as far as this story goes, there’s no there there. And rumors about what might come in weeks ahead are not facts. In fact, they’re garbage.

I’ve neither seen nor heard anything that indicates that Ms. Tripp’s story has any basis in fact. None of the endless crap Patrick posted about her before getting the boot from palingates.com offers any substantiation.

And even you write frequently that you know things you can’t yet post, but that soon “all will be revealed.” This has been going on since I first became aware of your blog, but as far as I know you haven’t substantiated a single claim or provided verification for a single rumor that you’ve posted about Sarah’s personal life, or the personal lives of any Palin family members. Thus, she gets to denounce what she calls “lies.”

Neither from you, the Enquirer, AlaskaWTF, palingates.com or anyone else, have I seen a credible, identified source backing any of the salacious stories about the Palin family.

Thus–as Random House lawyers are already pointing out to me–nothing I can cite other than my own reporting rises above the level of tawdry gossip. The proof is always just around the corner, but that’s a corner nobody has been able to turn. Maybe Jeff Dunn has, in which case I’ll be the first to congratulate him. But frankly, at this point, I’m tired of it, and I’ve run out of time.

No one has ever provided factual evidence that:

a) Todd had sex with a hooker, or with anyone else outside his marriage.

b) Sarah had an affair with Brad Hanson, or anyone else.

c) Track was a druggie who enlisted in the army to avoid a jail term. Or that he vandalized Wasilla school buses.

d) Willow was involved in the vandalism of the empty house in Meadow Lakes. Or that Sarah rushed back from Hawaii to put the lid on that.

e) Trig is not Sarah’s natural born child.

f) Bristol was promiscuous as a high schooler and drank and used drugs, or became pregnant again after Tripp’s birth.

Jesse, you were going on and on about Bristol being pregnant while doing Dancing With The Stars. And, if I recall correctly, at the time of her brief glossy-magazine-payday “reunion” with Levi, you surmised that she was pregnant by Ben Barber, or at least by someone who wasn’t Levi. You’ve recently suggested she’s had an abortion, publishing photographs that show her chubby then and thin now. But doesn’t that seem a little “thin” to you, based on nothing besides magazine pictures?

So much has bubbled at the salacious rumor stage for more than two years, but no one has been able to take even one story further.

Jesse, if you can put me in touch with people who are willing and able to substantiate any of the above, now is the time to do so. Otherwise, I hope you won’t complain that there are no startling new revelations in my book. My publisher and I think it’s damning enough without airing the family’s dirty laundry, but because Sarah’s hypocrisy about her family is one of the things that galls me most, I’d like to be able to publish facts in regard to a) through f) above, but I emphasize facts.

Not malicious speculation or third-hand rumors relayed by those who hold a grudge.

For any or all of those who’ve told you they’ll speak out, but not yet, now is the time. My book represents the last best chance to put the truth about Sarah in front of the American people in a documented, verifiable way. But I need facts that I can rely on. I didn’t live this long and work this hard over so many decades to wind up as AlaskaWTF between hard covers.

as always, and looking forward to seeing you in spring or summer,

Joe

Remember the Palin e-mail dump that was supposed to show the "real" Palin? It showed the "real" Palin is what we see. This is going to blow up even worse because Palin now has acess to her own media. If I were her, this will be a BFD!

Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan taken for a ride. Not because they were dumb, but because they were “quality” people?

In Richard Fernandez piece - Bayes and Nice People – he presumes that people like “Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan to be taken for a ride. Not because they were dumb, but because they were “quality” people.” They didn’t understand that Obama was a huckster because their life experiences did not include people like Obama:

But these unpleasant memories were largely absent in middle class, college educated, white America. These were nice people. They didn’t routinely associate with the con-men, hucksters, pawnshop brokers, and street corner grifters. To them the perfect hair, the nice suit, and the emphatic speech were simply proof of good personal grooming and culture.

To those who saw through the façade,

It would be interesting to study whether the same group of people who tended to view Barack Obama unfavorably in 2008 also saw John Edwards as a sharper. There was something about Edwards’ hair, the unnatural emphasis with which he delivered his messages, some oleaginous quality that hung about him that, like the burglar example in the Amazon review, stirred memories of something unpleasant in the viewer.

Of course the people who surrounded Obama: Rezko, Ayers, Wright, the whole Chicago political machine, even his autobiography which bragged about his ability to project a false image should have given everyone enough clues to reject him. For Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan his race, his appearance and his speech overwhelmed their senses; they were prepared – the whole Liberal world was primed to accept – the first “clean, articulate” black man. Obama was truly the “one” they had been waiting for. He was their fantasy in a single attractive package.

But Fernandez ends his essay on an ominous note.

But there’s one last thing that nice people don’t know. It is that hucksters aren’t confined by the same boundaries they assume everyone else is contained by. They are capable not only of sucker-punching you, but of exceeding limits you never thought could be transgressed. Grifters are in some sense not part of the same civilization that Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan inhabit. Maybe they don’t believe this yet. But they will. They will.

The assumption we all make is that Obama is enough like the traditional American politician to follow the broad rules even as he transgresses the little ones. But we should be warned that we really don’t know the bounds that Obama observes. Not only are grifters not part of the same civilization that saps like Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan inhabit, but they may exceed the limits that even his political opponents imagine exist.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Wealth and Taxes

For some reason there is all this hullabaloo about the rich not paying their fair share. Warren Buffett claims that his secretary is paying a higher percentage of her income in taxes than he is, which to me raises the question: what is Warren paying his secretary?

But for some reason, while the issue is framed as the rich and their share of taxes, the focus is not on wealth but on income. As anyone who deals with wealth knows, income and wealth are two very different things.

Take Warren Buffett as an example. If he did not earn anything for a year, or several years, or for the next century, it would not matter to him because it’s not his income but his wealth that would allow him to spend a million dollars a year for the next four hundred years without running out of money. On the other hand, his secretary would probably have a serious problem is she wasn’t paid on time.

So why this focus on income rather than wealth? Well, the first thing is that it’s a habit. Since the income tax was enacted in the early part of the 20th century, it’s income that has been taxed, not wealth. Income is a substitute measure of wealth, in financial terms it’s a derivative of wealth. Rich people are assumed to have higher incomes than poor people, and in most cases that’s true. But when we’re talking about taxing the wealthy like Warren Buffet, why are we talking about Warren’s income rather than his thirty-nine billion dollar net worth versus his secretary’s …. what? What is Warren’s secretary worth? We’re never told. It doesn’t matter. For some reason, the focus is on Warren’s income (which he can set and zero and still afford a private jet) rather than his wealth.

If we are seriously going to discuss taxing the wealthy, how about talking about a tax on wealth rather than income? It is estimated that America’s private wealth (stock and housing) is about $50 trillion dollars. Suppose we forget about taxing income, and tax wealth instead. If we set a wealth tax at 5%, that would generate about $2.5 trillion in revenue for the government (more than enough to keep the essential services going). And Warren Buffett’s share of that would be about $1.8 billion (using a net worth of $40 billion) almost certainly more than he’s paying now, and we would not have to endure his annual haranguing about paying less than his secretary.

If we’re going to tax the wealthy, let’s tax the wealthy rather than those trying to become wealthy via earning a lot. It’s only fair way to get Warren Buffet to pay his fair share.

Is it fair? Sure. According to Wikipedia, the wealthiest 25% of households own 87% of the country’s wealth while the bottom quartile held no net wealth at all. That means the poor person who rents his apartment and has no savings could work without paying any taxes at all while Warren Buffet pays $1.8 billion and Bill Gates pays about $3 billion (on wealth of about $59 billion). What could be fairer than that? Rich fat cats could no longer wriggle out of paying taxes by getting all their income via tax free bonds or paying a low capital gains tax rate. People could buy or sell their stocks or homes without having to worry about the tax consequences.

You may well ask what would the elderly homeowner do who has a million dollar home but not enough income to pay his tax? Well, it could spur the sale of that home, or pass it on to the next generation. The fact is, it’s not very different now when house-poor homeowners are forced to sell became of ever increasing property taxes. People have learned to cope with today’s tax framework. I know of many people who own highly appreciated stock that they’re holding on to even if it doesn’t produce income because of the gain-of-basis-on-death rule. Taxing asset value rather than income would eliminate many of the counterproductive decisions people make to take advantage of today’s complex tax rules.

A final benefit of taxing wealth is that most people do not realize what they are paying in taxes because of withholding. A wealth tax that is paid annually would bring home that gargantuan amount of our national wealth the government consumes. It would bring about a revolution in people’s minds about how our money is being taken and how it’s being wasted.

Let’s give Warren Buffett what he wants: let’s tax the wealthy by taxing their wealth.

Rick Perry Ad

After reiterating that every law enforcement agent that has been asked about Operation Fast and Furious has said that there is no way that it could have been a viable law enforcement operation, I asked Chairman Issa if there was any evidence of another reason for the implementation of Operation Fast and Furious and the other alleged gun-walking operations.

“This was dumb, it was useless, and it was lethal,” was the soundbite most of us will take away from the call in answer to that question, but his longer answer — which I regret I do not have a transcript of — is far more telling.

Nothing in his response could be construed to mean that Rep. Issa thought Operation Fast and Furious was a legitimate law enforcement operation. And if it does not appear to have been implemented as a legitimate law enforcement operation, then we are left with the possible alternative that the goal of the operation was both illegitimate and unlawful.

Issa put it rather bluntly: “The administration wanted to show that guns found in Mexico came from the United States.”

He elaborated a bit when he noted that while he wouldn’t presume to know the precise goals of Operation Fast and Furious, it certainly did seem to tie in with the narrative the Obama administration was trying to push — that U.S. guns were turning up at Mexican crime scenes. That allowed, the suggestion hanging in the air was that a goal of the Administration was indeed a “Reichstag fire” designed to support a narrative that has been publicly woven by Attorney General Holder, Secretary of State Clinton, Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano, and President Obama himself on multiple occasions.

One reason to assert the prominence of U.S. firearms in Mexico would be an attempt to once again bring forth an “assault weapons” ban like the failed 1994 law that sunset in 2004.

Except that the Nazis did not actually burn the Reichstag, they just used the fire as an excuse to crack down on their opposition.

The media much be laying those editors off.

I have noted a sharp increase in spelling errors in news reports recently. That's to be expected in the blogosphere where there are no editors. But here's an example from the Miami Herald's on-line edition: (writing of Obama's drop in the polls)

"This will require him to find ways to either win back the middle or energize his base in ways that hasn't happened so farm" Miringoff said

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Is the modern university a jobs program for administrators who teach students on the side?

The former head of GM once said words to the effect that he ran a health insurance/pension funding company that also makes cars. Unfortunately it’s a business model that is being replicated by higher education. The staggering cost of higher ed in the US has become a large part of the financial plight of the middle class as it strives to raise a family. It turns out graduates that can’t find a decent job (a recent engineering grad served me dinner recently) while either impoverishing his family or saddling him with thousands in student loans.

And where is that money going? Administrative overhead.

At the University of California, a leader in all things perverted

There now are nearly as many senior managers (8,144) as tenured and tenure-track faculty (8,521). As recently as 1993, the ratio between these groups was much different — 2,429 to 6,846.

Put another way, 18 years ago the student-to-upper management ratio was 62-to-1. Now it's all the way down to 2-to-1. The ratio of students to regular faculty, meanwhile, has risen from 22-to-1 in 1993 to 26-to-1.

...Many do real work in IT and other fields to support teaching and research. But the modern university is full of well-compensated people who, if they have any contact at all with traditional academics, only get in the way. They're tasked with promoting social change under labels like "diversity," "equity" and "inclusion."

I’d guess that employing more black and Hispanic administrators is far easier than hiring minority professors. This is all about jobs. The University’s website lists the African American Student Academic Services, American Indian Student Academic Services, Chicano/a Student Academic Services, a Multicultural Student Center, and various multicultural student organizations. A separate Academic Advancement Program (AAP) exists to assist “underrepresented students” and for four years helps “…create an inclusive campus climate where all members of the campus community feel valued, respected, and free to participate and achieve their highest academic and professional potential.” AAP “…focuses on academic advising, academic instructional support, academic engagement and enrichment, and community building, which are the four pillars of our program.” The AAP is not, however, to be confused with the Center for Educational Opportunity that works with over 600 students to upgrade their skills and mentors them. And don’t forget the Office of Equity and Diversity targeting underrepresented groups to achieve social justice. And for students struggling with certain subjects, I counted an additional six separate tutoring services.

This is only a sampling and omits what occurs in the admissions office and in feel-good courses on identity politics. One can only wonder how many educationally useless hours were spent crafting the Orwellian mission statements, progress reports and schemes to create yet more bureaucracy.

Solyndra, Crony Capitalism and the Leviathan State

Conservatives, Libertarians and even Republicans should use the stunning example to the bankruptcy of Solyndra to reach the obvious conclusion. Whether the Obama administration is corrupt, incompetent or simply the victim of ideological stupidity is almost beside the point. Of course it's all three.

The larger point is one that Conservatives and Libertarians have been making for some time: that government screws up and the bigger the government the bigger the screw-ups. Only government intervention could have produced the housing bubble, and the economic rubble that we are living with was created by government policies. Only government can run up fifteen trillion dollar deficits. Only government can create Ponzi schemes like Social Security and not go to jail. Only government can create programs like Medicare and Medicaid that can literally bankrupt the biggest, richest country in the history of the world. At the local level only government can promise its employees’ pension benefits that are impossible to pay.

Whatever the motivations or cupidity of the people that gave half a billion dollars to a solar panel company that had no hope of ever even breaking even, Solyndra is the poster child for a government that has grown gargantuan, that is the go-to guy for big capital in this country, that doesn’t have any idea of what works and what doesn’t and is determined to run your life and mine because it has the arrogance to believe its own bullshit about its intelligence and wisdom.

If Republicans could break away from its own adherence to crony capitalism, it could use Solyndra as the cudgel to break the hold that the statists, socialists and social engineers have on the country. Solyndra, it’s easy to understand, the dollars are big enough and the country’s in the mood to listen. Don’t play small ball with this one: go big. To avoid the next Solyndra, downsize government.

Monday, September 19, 2011

The issue is settled: man made global warming is a very expensive hoax designed to provide huge grants to researchers and wealth to Al Gore and GE.

...meet Ivar Giaever, a 1973 physics Nobel Laureate who resigned last week from the American Physical Society in protest over the group's insistence that evidence of man-made global warming is "incontrovertible."

In an email to the society, Mr. Giaever—who works at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—wrote that "The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me . . . that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period."

Mr. Giaever was an American Physical Society fellow, an honor bestowed on "only half of one percent" of the members, according to a spokesman. He follows in the footsteps of University of California at Santa Barbara Emeritus Professor of Physics Harold Lewis, a former APS fellow who resigned in 2010, calling global warming "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."

The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting.

This last type is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has perhaps been taken over en bloc from the old Liberal Party. In addition to this there is the horrible—the really disquieting—prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words "Socialism" and "Communism" draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, "Nature Cure" quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus.

The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured "Socialists," as who should say, "Red Indians." He was probably right—the I.L.P. were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank.

When the Left talk among themselves they don’t disguise the way that violent radicals like the BlackPanthers and the Young Lords are allied with mainstream Liberal organizations like the SEIU to complete the changes they fought for.

The airbrushing is done by the MSM who identify these people are “activists” or “human rights advocates.”

No coincidence that some of the key organizers for SEIU-1199 today are graduates of the Young Lords. They are still organizing, still educating about racism, and they are working for the re-election of Barack Obama, while continuing to fight for progressive social change.

Three days ago I had visitors on my farm. Two dear friends who are married to each other—one a former Young Lord, and one a former Panther, both doing critical organizing work for SEIU.

This is one of the benefits of kicking the MSM to the curb and eliminating their role as gatekeepers of information. It’s so simple really; the Left publishes their conspiracies in plain sight.